Search results for: Saudi mobile government services

Authors: Sayed Hadi Sadeghi

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This research study examines the current state of support services for e-network practice in an Australian and an American university. It identifies information that will be of assistance to Australian and American universities to improve their existing online programs. The study investigated the two universities using a quantitative methodological approach. Participants were students, lecturers and admins of universities engaged with online courses and learning management systems. The support services for e-network practice variables, namely academic support services, administrative support and technical support, were investigated for e-practice. Evaluations of e-network support service and its sub factors were above average and excellent in both countries, although the American admins and lecturers tended to evaluate this factor higher than others did. Support practice was evaluated higher by all participants of an American university than by Australians. One explanation for the results may be that most suppliers of the Australian university e-learning system were from eastern Asian cultural backgrounds with a western networking support perspective about e-learning.

Keywords: support services, e-Network practice, Australian universities, United States universities

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Authors: Hamad Albadr

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With a rapid influence to sustain the needs for global trends that had arisen for the increasing complexities in health-care provision, the increasing number of health professionals at different levels, and the need to assure more equitable access to health care, the great variation in the levels of initial education for health care professional around the world had been assign bachelor's degree as the minimum point of entry to the health professions. This intent had affected all the health care professions including biomedical engineering. In Saudi Arabia, these challenges add more pressure to retain the global trends for associate degree graduates to upgrade their education to the bachelor's degree or called birding. This paper is to review the reality of biomedical technology programs that offered in Saudi Arabia by Technical Colleges or Community Colleges nationwide and the challenges that face these colleges to run such bridging program to achieve the Bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering and the official requirements by the Ministry of Higher Education and to maintain the international standards. The author will use strategic planning methodology for designing the biomedical engineering bridging of bachelor's program by reviewing the responsibilities of the biomedical engineers in hospitals through their job descriptions to determine the job assessment needs in advance to Developing a Curriculum (DACUM) through Instructional System Design (ISD) approach via five steps: Analysis, Design, Development, Implement, Evaluate (ADDIE).

Keywords: bachelor's degree bridging, biomedical engineering program, Saudi Arabia, Riyadh College of Technology

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Authors: Arne Koschel

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This article discusses event monitoring options for heterogeneous event sources as they are given in nowadays heterogeneous distributed information systems. It follows the central assumption, that a fully generic event monitoring solution cannot provide complete support for event monitoring; instead, event source specific semantics such as certain event types or support for certain event monitoring techniques have to be taken into account. Following from this, the core result of the work presented here is the extension of a configurable event monitoring (Web) service for a variety of event sources. A service approach allows us to trade genericity for the exploitation of source specific characteristics. It thus delivers results for the areas of SOA, Web services, CEP and EDA.

Keywords: event monitoring, ECA, CEP, SOA, web services

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Authors: Luis Rodrigo Valencia Pérez, Juan Manuel Peña Aguilar, Adelina Morita Alexander, Alberto Lamadrid Alvarez, Héctor Fernando Valencia Pérez

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Financial education is among the areas of opportunity in the Spanish-speaking from an early age to high school, through mobile devices such as cell phones and tablets using ludic and fun applications like interactive games, children can learn money management and investment through time, thereby fostering the habit of saving and/or sound management of cash and family business resources, having interaction with an uncontrolled environment such as the involvement of other players in the external decisions of the environment in which the game is play. The application proposed in Phase 1 (design and development) was designed in multi-user environments, under methodologies of hybrid programming for any platform on the market and designed under CMMI standards that allow for quality production over time, following up on these improvements counting with continuous user feedback and usage statistics.

Keywords: mobile educational games, ludic games, children, multiuser, design and software development

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Authors: Qian Jin

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Museums have been using interactive technology to spark visitor interest and improve understanding. These technologies can play a crucial role in helping visitors understand more about an exhibition site by using multimedia to provide information. Google Arts and Culture and Smartify are two very successful digital heritage products. They used mobile augmented reality to visualise the museum's 3D models and heritage images but did not include 3D models of the collection and audio information. In this research, service-oriented mobile augmented reality application was developed for users to access collections from multiple museums(including V and A, the British Museum, and British Library). The third-party API (Application Programming Interface) is requested to collect metadata (including images, 3D models, videos, and text) of three museums' collections. The acquired content is then visualized in AR environments. This product will help users who cannot visit the museum offline due to various reasons (inconvenience of transportation, physical disability, time schedule).

Keywords: digital heritage, argument reality, museum, flutter, ARcore

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Authors: Ibrahim A. Al-Sulaihi, Khalid S. Al-Gahtani, Abdullah M. Al-Sugair, Aref A. Abadel

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Achieving environmental sustainability is one of the important issues considered in many countries’ vision. Green/Sustainable building is widely used terminology for describing a friendly environmental construction. Applying sustainable practices has a significant importance in various fields, including construction field that consumes an enormous amount of resource and causes a considerable amount of waste. The need for sustainability is increased in the regions that suffering from the limitation of natural resource and extreme weather conditions such as Saudi Arabia. Since buildings designs are getting sophisticated, the need for tools, which support decision-making for sustainability issues, is increasing, especially in the design and preconstruction stages. In this context, Building Information Modeling (BIM) can aid in performing complex building performance analyses to ensure an optimized sustainable building design. Accordingly, this paper introduces a roadmap towards developing a systematic approach for presenting the sustainability of buildings using BIM. The approach includes set of main processes including; identifying the sustainability parameters that can be used for sustainability assessment in Saudi Arabia, developing sustainability assessment method that fits the special circumstances in the Kingdom, identifying the sustainability requirements and BIM functions that can be used for satisfying these requirements, and integrating these requirements with identified functions. As a result, the sustainability-BIM approach can be developed which helps designers in assessing the sustainability and exploring different design alternatives at the early stage of the construction project.

Keywords: green buildings, sustainability, BIM, rating systems, environment, Saudi Arabia

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Authors: Gopinath Ganapathy, Chellammal Surianarayanan

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Services are growing rapidly and generally they are aggregated into a composite service to accomplish complex business processes. There may be several services that offer the same required function of a particular task in a composite service. Hence a choice has to be made for selecting suitable services from alternative functionally similar services. Quality of Service (QoS)plays as a discriminating factor in selecting which component services should be selected to satisfy the quality requirements of a user during service composition. There are two categories of approaches for QoS based service selection, namely global and local approaches. Global approaches are known to be Non-Polynomial (NP) hard in time and offer poor scalability in large scale composition. As an alternative to global methods, local selection methods which reduce the search space by breaking up the large/complex problem of selecting services for the workflow into independent sub problems of selecting services for individual tasks are coming up. In this paper, distributed architecture for selecting services based on QoS using local selection is presented with an overview of local selection methodology. The architecture describes the core components, namely, selection manager and QoS manager needed to implement the local approach and their functions. Selection manager consists of two components namely constraint decomposer which decomposes the given global or workflow level constraints in local or task level constraints and service selector which selects appropriate service for each task with maximum utility, satisfying the corresponding local constraints. QoS manager manages the QoS information at two levels namely, service class level and individual service level. The architecture serves as an implementation model for local selection.

Keywords: architecture of service selection, local method for service selection, QoS based service selection, approaches for QoS based service selection

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Authors: Manikandan S. P., Sharmila N.

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Pain in the neck, intermediate and anterior, and even low back may occur in one or more locations. Numerous factors can lead to back discomfort, which can manifest into sensations in the other parts of your body. Up to 80% of people will have low back problems at a certain stage of their lives, making spine-related pain a highly prevalent ailment. Roughly twice as commonly as neck pain, low back discomfort also happens about as often as knee pain. According to current studies, using digital devices for extended periods of time and poor sitting posture are the main causes of neck and low back pain. There are numerous monitoring techniques provided to enhance the sitting posture for the aforementioned problems. A sophisticated technique to monitor the extended sitting position is suggested in this research based on this problem. The system is made up of an inertial measurement unit, a T-shirt, an Arduino board, a buzzer, and a mobile app with cloud services. Based on the anatomical position of the spinal cord, the inertial measurement unit was positioned on the inner back side of the T-shirt. The IMU (inertial measurement unit) sensor will evaluate the hip position, imbalanced shoulder, and bending angle. Based on the output provided by the IMU, the data will be analyzed by Arduino, supplied through the cloud, and shared with a mobile app for continuous monitoring. The buzzer will sound if the measured data is mismatched with the human body's natural position. The implementation and data prediction with design to identify balanced and unbalanced posture using a posture monitoring t-shirt will be further discussed in this research article.

Keywords: IMU, posture, IOT, textile

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Authors: Senthil Kumar Anantharaman

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Providing telecommunications based network services in developing countries like India which has a population of 1.5 billion people, so that these services reach every individual, is one of the greatest challenges the country has been facing in its journey towards economic growth and development. With growing number of telecommunications service providers in the country, a constant challenge that has been faced by these providers is in providing not only quality but also delightful customer experience while simultaneously generating enhanced revenues and profits. Thus, the role played by process improvement methodologies like Six Sigma cannot be undermined and specifically in telecom service provider based operations, it has provided substantial benefits. Therefore, it advantages are quite comparable to its applications and advantages in other sectors like manufacturing, financial services, information technology-based services and Healthcare services. One of the key reasons that this methodology has been able to reap great benefits in telecommunications sector is that this methodology has been combined with many of its competing process improvement techniques like Theory of Constraints, Lean and Kaizen to give the maximum benefit to the service providers thereby creating a winning combination of organized process improvement methods for operational excellence thereby leading to business excellence. This paper discusses about some of the key projects and areas in the end to end ‘Quote to Cash’ process at big three Indian telecommunication companies that have been highly assisted by applying Six Sigma along with other process improvement techniques. While the telecommunication companies which we have considered, is primarily in India and run by both private operators and government based setups, the methodology can be applied equally well in any other part of developing countries around the world having similar context. This study also compares the enhanced revenues that can arise out of appropriate opportunities in emerging market scenarios, that Six Sigma as a philosophy and methodology can provide if applied with vigour and robustness. Finally, the paper also comes out with a winning framework in combining Six Sigma methodology with Kaizen, Lean and Theory of Constraints that will enhance both the top-line as well as the bottom-line while providing the customers a delightful experience.

Keywords: emerging markets, lean, process improvement, six sigma, telecommunications, theory of constraints

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Authors: Ugwu O. C., Mamah R. O., Awudu W. S.

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This work is aimed at enhancing signal reception on a mobile radio network and minimizing outage probability in a mobile radio network using adaptive beamforming antenna arrays. In this research work, an empirical real-time drive measurement was done in a cellular network of Globalcom Nigeria Limited located at Ikeja, the headquarters of Lagos State, Nigeria, with reference base station number KJA 004. The empirical measurement includes Received Signal Strength and Bit Error Rate which were recorded for exact prediction of the signal strength of the network as at the time of carrying out this research work. The Received Signal Strength and Bit Error Rate were measured with a spectrum monitoring Van with the help of a Ray Tracer at an interval of 100 meters up to 700 meters from the transmitting base station. The distance and angular location measurements from the reference network were done with the help Global Positioning System (GPS). The other equipment used were transmitting equipment measurements software (Temsoftware), Laptops and log files, which showed received signal strength with distance from the base station. Results obtained were about 11% from the real-time experiment, which showed that mobile radio networks are prone to signal failure and can be minimized using an Adaptive Beamforming Antenna Array in terms of a significant reduction in Bit Error Rate, which implies improved performance of the mobile radio network. In addition, this work did not only include experiments done through empirical measurement but also enhanced mathematical models that were developed and implemented as a reference model for accurate prediction. The proposed signal models were based on the analysis of continuous time and discrete space, and some other assumptions. These developed (proposed) enhanced models were validated using MATLAB (version 7.6.3.35) program and compared with the conventional antenna for accuracy. These outage models were used to manage the blocked call experience in the mobile radio network. 20% improvement was obtained when the adaptive beamforming antenna arrays were implemented on the wireless mobile radio network.

Keywords: beamforming algorithm, adaptive beamforming, simulink, reception

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Authors: Mamani Acurio Alex, Aguilar Alonso Igor

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The lack of interest and the lack of motivation are related. The lack of both in school generates serious problems such as school dropout or a low level of learning. Augmented reality has been very useful in different areas, and in this research, it was implemented in the area of education. Information necessary for the correct development of this mobile application with augmented reality was searched using six different research repositories. It was concluded that the application must be immersive, attractive, and fun for students, and the necessary technologies for its construction were defined.

Keywords: augmented reality, Vuforia, school interest, learning

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Authors: Agria Rhamdhan

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WhatsApp as the most popular mobile messaging app has been used as evidence in many criminal cases. As the use of mobile messages generates large amounts of data, forensic investigation faces the challenge of large data problems. The hardest part of finding this important evidence is because current practice utilizes tools and technique that require manual analysis to check all messages. That way, analyze large sets of mobile messaging data will take a lot of time and effort. Our work offers methodologies based on forensic triage to reduce large data to manageable sets resulting easier to do detailed reviews, then show the results through interactive visualization to show important term, entities and relationship through intelligent ranking using Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) Model. By implementing this methodology, investigators can improve investigation processing time and result's accuracy.

Keywords: forensics, triage, visualization, WhatsApp

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Authors: Benjaporn Yaemjamuang, Sasitorn Jetanont

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The three star hotels in Sukhumvit area of Bangkok and the potential to be in the tourism industry joining the ASEAN Community were studied. The findings revealed that the representative samples satisfy the potential of hotel services at a high level in all aspects. The level of service satisfaction by gender is not different. On the other hand, for different ethnic origins, ages, occupations, levels of education, the satisfaction on the services varies in significance level of 0.05. Factors associated with satisfaction in the services of the hotel include a potential location and environment. It was also found that satisfaction with the service aspects are related as follows: services (r = .810), food (r = .807), booking service (r = .768), room condition (r = .762) and security (r =.756) which is aligned with the coefficient .826.

Keywords: three star hotel, ASEAN community, potential in tourism industry, Bangkok

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Authors: Kever Bruno Paradelo Gomes, Rosana Carvalho Cristo Martins

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Payment for Environmental Services (PSA) has been a strategy used since the late 1990s by Latin American countries to finance environmental conservation. Payment for Environmental Services has been absorbing a growing amount of time in the discussions around environmentally sustainable development strategies in the world. In Brazil, this theme has permeated the discussions since the publication of the new Forest Code. The objective of this work was to verify the perception of the resident farmers in the region of Ponte Alta, Gama, Federal District, Brazil, on environmental legislation and Payments for Environmental Services. The work was carried out in 99 rural properties of the family farmers of the Rural Nucleus Ponte Alta, Administrative Region of Gama, in the city of Brasília, Federal District, Brazil. The present research is characterized methodologically as a quantitative, exploratory, and descriptive nature. The data treatment was performed through descriptive statistical analysis and hypothesis testing. The perceptions about environmental legislation in the rural area of Ponte Alta, Gama, DF respondents were positive. Although most of the family farmers interviewed have some knowledge about environmental legislation, it is perceived that in practice, the environmental adequacy of property is ineffective given the current situation of sustainable rural development; there is an abyss between what is envisaged by legislation and reality in the field. Thus, as in the reports of other researchers, it is verified that the majority of respondents are not aware of PSA (62.62%). Among those interviewed who were aware of the subject, two learned through the course, three through the university, two through TV and five through other people. The planting of native forest species on the rural property was the most informed practice by farmers if they received some Environmental Service Payment (PSA). Reflections on the environment allow us to infer that the effectiveness and fulfillment of the incentives and rewards in the scope of public policies to encourage the maintenance of environmental services, already existing in all spheres of government, are of great relevance to the process of environmental sustainability of rural properties. The relevance of the present research is an important tool to promote the discussion and formulation of public policies focused on sustainable rural development, especially on payments for environmental services; it is a space of great interest for the strengthening of the social group dedicated to production. Public policies that are efficient and accessible to the small rural producers become decisive elements for the promotion of changes in behavior in the field, be it economic, social, or environmental.

Keywords: forest code, public policy, rural development, sustainable agriculture

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Authors: Jacques Wels

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Japan has one of the highest average retirement ages within the OCDE and is paving the way to raise the retirement age to 70. However, the Japanese labour market is facing two main issues that can have detrimental effects on health: non-standard employment forms are widespread among the ageing workforce, and poor working conditions can contribute to explain poor health in late career. To assess such a relationship, the study uses data from JSTAR. Using mediation analysis, it particularly looks at the association between job dissatisfaction, employment status, self-perceived health (SPH), and use of health care services. Results show that work quality and employment status are associated with SPH. Contract work has a particularly negative impact and therefore contributes to explain the use of health care services but is not significantly associated with lower job satisfaction levels. SPH is a good predictor of the use of health care services.

Keywords: self-reported health, occupational health, employment, older workers, mediation

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Authors: Nasrin Akter, Prem Chhetri, Shams Rahman

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The present study tested Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model to explain the formation of business customers’ intention to use 3PL services in Bangladesh. The findings show that the TPB model has a good fit to the data. Based on theoretical support and suggested modification indices, a refined TPB model was developed afterwards which provides a better predictive power for intention. Consistent with the theory, the results of a structural equation analysis revealed that the intention to use 3PL services is predicted by attitude and subjective norms but not by perceived behavioral control. Further investigation indicated that the paths between (attitude and intention) and (subjective norms and intention) did not statistically differ between 3PL user and non-user. Findings of this research provide an evidence base to formulate business strategies to increase the use of 3PL services in Bangladesh to enhance productivity and to gain economic efficiency.

Keywords: Bangladesh, intention, third-party logistics, Theory of Planned Behavior

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Authors: Hasen Keder Edris, Ryuji Matsunaga, Toshi Yamanaka

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The issue of climate change and its impact is a major contemporary global concern. Ethiopia is one of the countries experiencing adverse climate change impact including frequent extreme weather events that are exacerbating drought and water scarcity. Due to this reason, the government of Ethiopia develops a strategic document which focuses on the climate resilience green economy. One of the major components of the strategic framework is designed to improve community adaptation capacity and mitigation of drought. For effective implementation of the strategy, identification of regions relative vulnerability to drought is vital. There is a growing tendency of applying Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing technologies for collecting information on duration and severity of drought by direct measure of the topography as well as an indirect measure of land cover. This study aims to show an application of remote sensing technology and GIS for developing drought vulnerability index by taking lowland of Ethiopia as a case study. In addition, it assesses integrated Information Communication Technology (ICT) potential of Ethiopia lowland and proposes integrated solution. Satellite data is used to detect the beginning of the drought. The severity of drought risk prone areas of livestock keeping pastoral is analyzed through normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and ten years rainfall data. The change from the existing and average SPOT NDVI and vegetation condition index is used to identify the onset of drought and potential risks. Secondary data is used to analyze geographical coverage of mobile and internet usage in the region. For decades, the government of Ethiopia introduced some technologies and approach to overcoming climate change related problems. However, lack of access to information and inadequate technical support for the pastoral area remains a major challenge. In conventional business as usual approach, the lowland pastorals continue facing a number of challenges. The result indicated that 80% of the region face frequent drought occurrence and out of this 60% of pastoral area faces high drought risk. On the other hand, the target area mobile phone and internet coverage is rapidly growing. One of identified ICT solution enabler technology is telecom center which covers 98% of the region. It was possible to identify the frequently affected area and potential drought risk using the NDVI remote-sensing data analyses. We also found that ICT can play an important role in mitigating climate change challenge. Hence, there is a need to strengthen implementation efforts of climate change adaptation through integrated Remote Sensing and web based information dissemination and mobile alert of extreme events.

Keywords: climate changes, ICT, pastoral, remote sensing

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Authors: Nebiat Lemenih Lenger

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Today, the digital economy is evolving faster than ever in Ethiopia. Platforms that provide a ride-hailing service are growing fast in the country. The market welcomed them as they disrupt it with quality services and lower prices. This revolution is, however, not without challenges. These include cybersecurity breaches, facilitating illegal economic activities, and challenging concepts of privacy. To mitigate the risks and utilize the benefits, appropriate regulation should be introduced in the economy. By identifying legal and institutional gaps in Ethiopia`s digital economy, this research work assists the government`s effort to create a better digital economy. Moreover, this study, being a pioneer study in the area, will be an input for further studies in academia. The research employs a qualitative legal research method and analyzes various legal and policy instruments in Ethiopia in comparison with best international experiences. As this research applies a qualitative research method, a grounded theory method of data analysis is used. The research concluded that Ethiopia is far from designing appropriate legal and regulatory infrastructures. Due to the government monopoly of the sector, there is poor digital infrastructure in the country. The existing labor laws have no specific provisions on the rights and obligations of gig workers.

Keywords: Ethiopia, gig economy, digital, ride-hailing, regulation

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Authors: A. Alharbi, R. Boukhanouf, T. Habeebullah, H. Ibrahim

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This paper presents a detailed description of evaporative cooling systems used for space cooling in Mina Valley, Saudi Arabia. The thermal performance and environmental impact of the evaporative coolers were evaluated. It was found that the evaporative cooling systems used for space cooling in pilgrims’ accommodations and in the train stations could reduce energy consumption by as much as 75% and cut carbon dioxide emission by 78% compared to traditional vapour compression systems.

Keywords: evaporative cooling, vapor compression, electricity consumption, CO2 emission

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Authors: Azzah Alghamdi

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The Interactive White Boards (IWBs) as one of the innovative educational technologies have been extensively investigated in advanced countries such as the UK, US, and Australia. However, there is a significant lack of research studies, which mainly examine the use of IWBs in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the attitudes of primary teachers towards using IWBs in both the teaching and learning processes. Moreover, it aims to investigate if there is any significant difference between male teachers and females regarding their attitudes towards using this technology. This study concentrated on teachers in primary schools, which participated in Tatweer project in the city of Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia. Mixed methods approach was employed in this study using a designed questionnaire, classroom observations, and a semi-structured interview. 587 teachers (286 men and 301 women) from Tatweer primary schools were completed the questionnaire as well as twenty teachers were interviewed including seven female teachers were observed in their classrooms. The findings of this study indicated that approximately 11% of the teachers within the sample (n=587) had negative attitudes towards the use of IWBs in the teaching and learning processes. However, the majority of them nearly 89% agreed about the benefits of using IWBs in their classrooms. Additionally, all the twenty teachers who were interviewed (including the seven observed female teachers) had positive attitudes towards the use of these technologies. Moreover, 87% of male teachers and 91% of female teachers who completed the questionnaire accepted the usefulness of using IWBs in improving their teaching and students' learning. Thus, this indicates that there was no significant difference between male and female teachers in Tatweer primary schools in terms of their views about using these innovative technologies in their lessons. The findings of the current study will help the Ministry of Education to improve the policies of using IWBs in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, examining teachers’ attitudes towards IWBs is a very important issue because they are the main users in classrooms. Hence, their views should be considered to addressing the powers and boundaries of using IWBs. Moreover, students will feel comfortable to use IWBs if their teachers accept and use them well.

Keywords: IWBs, Saudi teachers’ views, Tatweer schools, teachers' gender

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Authors: Guncel Ozturk

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Background: Rhinoplasty is the most commonly performed cosmetic operations in plastic surgery. Maneuvers used in rhinoplasty lead to a firm and stiff nasal tip in the early postoperative months. This unnatural stability of the nose may easily cause distortion in the reshaped nose after severe trauma. Moreover, a firm nasal tip may cause difficulties in performing activities such as touching, hugging, or kissing. Decreasing the stability and increasing the mobility of the nasal tip would help rhinoplasty patients to avoid these small but relatively important problems. Methods: We use delivery approach with closed rhinoplasty and changed positions of intranasal incisions to reach a dynamic and mobile nose. A total of 203 patients who had undergone primary closed rhinoplasty in private practice were inspected retrospectively. Posterior strut flap that was connected with connective tissues in the caudal of septum and the medial crurals were formed. Cartilage of the posterior strut graft was left 2 mm thick in the distal part of septum, it was cut vertically, and the connective tissue in the distal part was preserved. Results: The median patient age was 24 (range 17-42) years. The median follow-up period was15.2 (range12-26) months. Patient satisfaction was assessed with the 'Rhinoplasty Outcome Evaluation' (ROE) questionnaire. Twelve months after surgeries, 87.5% of patients reported excellent outcomes, according to ROE. Conclusion: The soft tissue connections between that segment and surrounding structures should be preserved to save the support of the tip while having a mobile tip at the same time with this method. These modifications would access to a mobile, non-stiff, and dynamic nasal tip in the early postoperative months. Further and prospective studies should be performed for supporting this method.

Keywords: closed rhinoplasty, dynamic, mobile, tip

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Authors: Anthonia Emmanuel Inaja

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The role of the counseling services by Special Educators, Guidance Counsellors and psychologists alike to Families and Parents of children with special needs cannot be over-emphasized. This paper examined the vital role of counseling services and its impact on the emotional and physical readiness of parents to initiate and support the education and rehabilitation needs of their children. The paper considered the importance of counseling, when counseling services are best required preparing the mindset of parents and family members as well as the immediate community of the social needs child.

Keywords: counseling, families, special, needs, children, problems, prospect

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Authors: Sultan Aldaihani, Eiman Al-Fadhli

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Internet of Things (IoTs) expected to change the future of academic libraries operations. It enables academic libraries to be smart libraries through, for example, the connection of the physical objects with the Internet. The implementation of IoTs will improve library resources and services. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the applications of Internet of Things (IoTs) for information resources and services. Understanding perceptions of academic librarians toward IoTs before adopting of such applications will assist decision-makers in academic libraries in their strategic planning. An online questionnaire was administered to academic librarians at Kuwait University. The findings of this study showed that academic librarians have awareness for the IoTs. They have strongly believed that the IoTs contributes to the development of information resources, services, and understanding of the user's information behavior. Identifying new applications of the IoTs in libraries was the highest possible reason for future adoption. Academic librarians indicated that lack of privacy and data penetration were the greatest problem in their future adoption of IoTs. Academic libraries need to implement the IoTs for enhancing their information resources and services. One important step in the success of future adoption is to conduct awareness and training programs for academic librarians. They also need to maintain higher security and privacy measurements in their implementation for the IoTs. This study will assist academic libraries in accommodating this technology.

Keywords: academic libraries, internet of things, information resources, information services

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Authors: Mahinaz Saad

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Little empirical data exists regarding smartphone usage for news consumption in the UAE, and no previous research explored undergraduate female university students’ usage of smartphones. This represents a gap in the professional literature and makes it an important area to examine. Uses and Gratifications theory is used to study the motivations of consumers for adopting a particular type of communication tool. This theory is an audience-centred approach to understanding mass communication that assumes audiences are active consumers of media and explains why and how people seek out specific media to satisfy needs. This theory is particularly relevant given the rapid development of new communication technologies. Situated within this theoretical framework, this study utilised a quantitative research design to explore respondents’ (N=488) how and why respondents use their smartphones. Further, this study explored the relationship between mobile news use and the use of other mediums for news access and how different gratifications predict mobile hard news use and mobile soft news use. Results revealed that smartphones often replace traditional media as a news source and have become students’ primary source of news. Results also revealed that different gratifications can be used as a predictor of mobile hard news and soft news and that most students use their smartphones to access soft news. These results are fundamental in allowing us to predict possible future trends relating to news consumption in the UAE and the myriad ways in which the media landscape is changing.

Keywords: uses and gratifications, smartphones, university students, news consumption

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Authors: Carlos Alves

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This research paper demonstrates how payments for environmental services (PES) can be an effective mechanism to combat food insecurity and reduce environmental degradation in developing countries. The paper begins by discussing how environmental services affect each one of the pillars of food security: availability, access, and utilization of food. However, due to numerous global environmental challenges, a new pillar of food security based on environmental sustainability is proposed and discussed. An argument is then made that PES can usefully combat food insecurity. It can provide an extra income to those who take on environmental service and help them to have a better access to food. In order to be successful in addressing food insecurity, PES schemes should target on the poor and redress issues that can prevent their effectiveness. Finally, the research presents a case study that discusses how several developing countries addressed problems and successfully developed PES programs.

Keywords: environmental sustainability, food security, nutrition, payments for environmental services

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Authors: Faizan Sultan

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Non-government organizations (NGOs) in Pakistan have the potential to deliver services such as health, education, and rural development through targeting the most vulnerable communities of society. Having this significant importance, NGOs are facing numerous challenges in service delivery. So, there is a need to identify the challenges NGOs face in community development, particularly post-conflict development. The current study has analyzed the social and political constraints in development projects in the post-conflict region of the Swat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The objectives of this study are “What are the social and political constraints faced by the nongovernmental organizations in the implementation of development aid Projects in post-conflict development of Swat and to examine the challenges in coordination mechanism between government departments, NGOs, and community in reconstruction activities”. This research is based upon both the quantitative and qualitative data that is being gathered from the NGO representatives, government officials, and community members who were involved in post-conflict development interventions in the Swat region. A purposive sampling technique was used to select respondents from the community members/activists (25 in number) and government and NGO officials (10 in number). Based on analysis against our objectives, NGOs have faced numerous constraints such as Insecurity, Negative Perceptions about NGOs, restrictions on women's mobility, government policies and regulations, lack of coordination and networking, trust deficit, and political interference while implementing their project interventions. These findings concluded that constraints have affected project implementation to a greater extent, including women's participation, involvement of marginalized populations, and equal distribution of resources. In the Swat region, NGOs cannot openly discuss sensitive projects such as human rights, gender-based projects, or women empowerment as these issues are very sensitive to the local community due to their cultural values. The community may not allow their females to go outside their homes as this region is a male-dominated society. Similarly, lack of communication and poor networking for the arrangements of the project meetings were also the major constraints.

Keywords: national disaster management authority, millennium development goals, provincial disaster management authority, provincial reconstruction, rehabilitation and settlement authority

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Authors: Yaner Yan, Ning Li, Yajun Qiao, Shuqing An

Abstract:

Although most studies have focused on assessing and mapping terrestrial ecosystem services, there is still a knowledge gap on coastal ecosystem services and an urgent need to assess them. Lau (2013) clearly defined five types of costal ecosystem services: carbon sequestration, shoreline protection, fish nursery, biodiversity, and water quality. While high-resolution remote sensing can provide the more direct, spatially estimates of biophysical parameters, such as species distribution relating to biodiversity service, and Fluorescence information derived from remote sensing direct relate to photosynthesis, availing in estimation of carbon sequestration and the response to environmental changes in coastal wetland. Here, we review the capabilities of high-resolution and fluorescence remote sesing for describing biodiversity, vegetation condition, ecological processes and highlight how these prodicts may contribute to costal ecosystem service assessment. In so doing, we anticipate rapid progress to combine the high-resolution and fluorescence remote sesing to estimate the spatial pattern of costal ecosystem services.

Keywords: ecosystem services, high resolution, remote sensing, chlorophyll fluorescence

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Authors: Hafsa Raheel

Abstract:

Background: Adolescents who suffer from depression early in life, have an increase in suicidal tendency, anxiety, conduct disorders, substance abuse, and continue to be depressed, later on in life. This study was conducted to identify the prevalence and correlates of depression among adolescent girls in Riyadh city in order to carry out early intervention. Methods: A cross‑sectional, school‑based survey was conducted among 1028 adolescent girls aged 15–19 years in secondary schools of Riyadh city. Riyadh was divided into clusters and within each cluster, both public and private schools were enrolled. From the selected schools students from grade 10–12 were surveyed. Survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire including the beck depression inventory‑II, and questions exploring the correlates of depression. Results: About 30% of participants were found to be depressed. Depression was more prevalent among female adolescents whose household income was inferior to 12,000 Saudi Riyal/month (odds ratio [OR] 2.17, confidence interval [CI] 0.97–6.84), did not have a good relationship with peers and family members (OR 4.63, CI 2.56–8.41), lived with single parent or alone (OR 1.77, CI 0.97–3.23), had been emotionally abused (OR 3.45, CI 2.56–8.41), and those who had been subjected to physical violence at least once (OR 3.34, CI 1.89–5.91). Conclusions: Strategies need to be developed to identify early signs and symptoms of depression among Saudi female adolescents. Training can be given to groups of students to help their peers, and also to the teachers to identify, and help students identify early signs of depression and provide them with better‑coping strategies to combat progression of depression and anxiety among such adolescents.

Keywords: adolescents, depression, Saudi Arabia, mental health

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Authors: Mico Kenshee C. Samarista, John Harvey V. Miranda, Janne Audrae Q. Lebosada, Josef Anton R. Benitez, Juan Miguel C. Rubio

Abstract:

This research paper presents the development and evaluation of a web-based application designed to simplify the process of car rental services in the Philippines. As the demand for convenient and efficient access to rental car information grows, the need for a user-friendly platform becomes increasingly crucial. The web-based application serves as a comprehensive central hub, aggregating and organizing rental car listings from various reputable websites across the Philippines. By collecting essential data through surveys and usability testing, we assess the platform's effectiveness in simplifying the rental car selection process.

Keywords: web, application, car, services

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Authors: Marziyeh Bahrami, Hamed Pahlevan Hsseini, Behnam Ghamami, Arman Alvanpour, Hamed Ezzati, Amir Salar Sadeghi

Abstract:

One of the ways to increase the efficiency of services in the system of agents and, of course, in the world of cloud computing, is to use virtualization techniques. The aim of this research is to create changes in cloud computing services that will reduce as much as possible the energy consumption related to the migration of virtual machines and, in some way, the energy related to the allocation of resources and reduce the amount of pollution. So far, several methods have been proposed to increase the efficiency of cloud computing services in order to save energy in the cloud environment. The method presented in this article tries to prevent energy consumption by data centers and the subsequent production of carbon and biological pollutants as much as possible by increasing the efficiency of cloud computing services. The results show that the proposed algorithm, using the improvement in virtualization techniques and with the help of a genetic algorithm, improves the efficiency of cloud services in the matter of migrating virtual machines and finally saves consumption. becomes energy.

Keywords: consumption reduction, cloud computing, genetic algorithm, live migration, virtual Machine

Procedia PDF Downloads 39